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bolverk

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by bolverk

  1. Just a reminder, there's a long history of corrupt right-wing autocrats in Latin America, too, from whom folks have been running. This matters to millions of Hondurans who sought asylum here during his near-decade-long reign, but it's just a blip on the American news media radar. Ex-Honduras President Found Guilty in Drug Trafficking Trial Juan Orlando Hernández had been accused of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States and working with notorious drug traffickers like El Chapo. For more than a decade, Juan Orlando Hernández wielded power in Honduras, first as a member of Congress, then as that body’s leader and finally as the nation’s president. On Friday, an American jury in Federal District Court found Mr. Hernández guilty of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States and of possessing and conspiring to possess “destructive devices,” including machine guns. After the verdict was delivered, Mr. Hernández, who faces a mandatory prison term of at least 40 years and is scheduled to be sentenced on June 26, rose to his feet and stood quietly with folded hands as the jurors filed from the courtroom. During his first presidential campaign in 2013, Mr. Hernández, a member of the right-wing Honduran National Party, portrayed himself as a law-and-order candidate who could stem the epidemic of drugs and crime that had suffused the country. But according to prosecutors in the United States, Mr. Hernández was allied with the same forces he purported to oppose. A string of witnesses testified during a conspiracy trial in Manhattan that Mr. Hernández’s political success was fueled by drug proceeds funneled to him by cocaine traffickers whom he treated as business partners. Prosecutors have said that Mr. Hernández received millions of dollars from trafficking organizations in Honduras, Mexico and elsewhere, including from Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known as El Chapo, who was a Mexican drug lord and the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel. In return, prosecutors added, Mr. Hernández allowed vast amounts of cocaine to pass through Honduras on its way to the United States. He boasted that he would “stuff the drugs right up the noses of the gringos,” according to U.S. prosecutors. cont'd
  2. They potentially owed hundreds of millions in taxes, stealing from all of us. By all accounts, it appears Barr killed the investigation, and the DOJ is still letting them off the hook today. You can be guaranteed nothing will come of this, and this story won't get traction because we're all apparently fine with it -- business as usual. How Trump’s Justice Dept. Derailed an Investigation of a Major Company The industrial giant Caterpillar hired William Barr and other lawyers to defuse a federal criminal investigation of alleged tax dodges. In December 2018, a team of federal law enforcement agents flew to Amsterdam to interview a witness in a yearslong criminal investigation into Caterpillar, which had avoided billions of dollars of income taxes by shifting profits to a Swiss subsidiary. A few hours before the interview was set to begin, the agents were startled to hear that the Justice Department was telling them to cancel the long-planned meeting. The interview was never rescheduled, and the investigation would limp along for another few years before culminating, in late 2022, with a victory for Caterpillar. The Internal Revenue Service told the giant industrial company to pay less than a quarter of the back taxes the government once claimed that Caterpillar owed and did not impose any penalties. The criminal investigation was closed without charges being filed — and even without agents having the chance to review records seized from the company. Caterpillar appears to have defused the investigation at least in part by deploying a type of raw legal power that rarely becomes publicly visible. This account is based on interviews with people familiar with the investigation, regulatory filings and internal Justice Department emails provided to Senate investigators and reviewed by The New York Times. In the months leading up to the canceled interview in the Netherlands, Caterpillar had enlisted a small group of well-connected lawyers to plead the company’s case. Chief among those was William P. Barr, who had served as attorney general in the George H.W. Bush administration. Caterpillar’s attorneys met with senior federal officials, including the Justice Department’s top tax official, Richard Zuckerman, according to agency emails. The lawyers sharply criticized the conduct of one of the agents working on the Caterpillar case and questioned the legal basis for the investigation. A week before the agents were to interview the witness in the Netherlands, President Donald J. Trump nominated Mr. Barr to return to the Justice Department as the next attorney general. Mr. Zuckerman then ordered the interview to be canceled and the inquiry halted, without getting input from the prosecutor overseeing the Caterpillar investigation, according to the emails. The sequence of events alarmed some federal officials and set off calls for an internal investigation. “It appears that Caterpillar was given special political treatment that the average U.S. citizen cannot obtain,” Jason LeBeau, one of the agents who worked on the investigation, wrote to the Justice Department’s inspector general late last year. Justice Department and I.R.S. representatives declined to comment. “Caterpillar cooperated with the government in its review of the issues, and we were pleased to have reached the resolution with the I.R.S.,” said Joan Cetera, a spokeswoman for the company. cont'd
  3. Pentagon Review Finds No Evidence of Alien Cover-Up But the new report suggests that the public’s belief that the government is hiding what it knows will probably continue. In the 1960s, secret test flights of advanced government spy planes generated U.F.O. sightings. More recently, government and commercial drones, new kinds of satellites and errant weather balloons have led to a renaissance in unusual observations. But, according to a new report, none of these sightings were of alien spacecraft. The new congressionally mandated Pentagon report found no evidence that the government was covering up knowledge of extraterrestrial technology and said there was no evidence that any U.F.O. sightings represented alien visitation to Earth. The 63-page document is the most sweeping rebuttal the Pentagon has issued in recent years to counter claims that it has information on extraterrestrial visits or technology. But amid widespread distrust of the government, the report is unlikely to calm a growing obsession with aliens. Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, a Defense Department spokesman, said the Pentagon approached the report with an open mind and no preconceived notions, but simply found no evidence to back up claims of secret programs, hidden alien technology or anything else extraterrestrial. “All investigative efforts, at all levels of classification, concluded that most sightings were ordinary objects and phenomena and the result of misidentification,” General Ryder said in a statement.
  4. I didn't know the former mayor of Dallas was involved in this. And how can they run a candidate if they're not a political party? How the fuck does that work? No Labels, a Centrist Group, Moves Toward a Third-Party Presidential Bid The group said it had voted to nominate a ticket, but did not announce which candidate might run on its ballot line. Democrats have worried that such a bid could siphon support from President Biden. The centrist group No Labels said on Friday that it would move forward with plans to nominate a presidential ticket, a move that, if it comes to fruition, would add another complicating factor to the November election. Leaders of the group announced the plan after an online meeting of its members. The group said it had 800 delegates who voted “near unanimously” to nominate a ticket. No Labels has yet to announce a candidate who might run on its ballot line, however, and several of the best-known politicians it has courted have ruled out a presidential run on a third-party ticket. “Even though we met virtually, their emotion and desire to bring this divided nation back together came right through the screen,” said Mike Rawlings, No Labels’s national convention chair. The meeting came at a pivotal moment for No Labels. As state deadlines approach for getting on the ballot for the November election, the group had to move quickly to decide whether to begin a third-party bid, and name its ticket. No Labels’s evolution from a bipartisan, think tank-like organization to a would-be third party, with aspirations of a presidential candidacy, has alarmed many Democrats, who worry that the group could pull critical votes away from President Biden in battleground states. “No Labels has put their dangerous, reckless thought experiment ahead of the rights and freedoms of millions of Americans and the future of our democracy,” said Rahna Epting, the executive director of MoveOn, the liberal activist group. “Any candidates who join the No Labels presidential ticket will be complicit in making it easier for Donald Trump and MAGA extremists to win a second term in the White House.” No Labels’s operations have been cloaked in secrecy. The national group is technically not a political party but a nonprofit social welfare organization, so it does not have to disclose its donors or provide details about its activities. Last year, its leaders were trying to raise $70 million for ballot access efforts. At the time, they said they would hold a national convention in Dallas in April, but that plan has since been jettisoned. The group’s delegates expect to vote on a ticket selected by the group’s leaders, people involved with the group have said. Even the means by which it would pick a ticket are unclear. The group has said it has 800 “delegates” in all 50 states who would play some role in selecting the candidates, but their names have never been disclosed, and the number could not be independently verified. No Labels leaders have said they will nominate a ticket if Mr. Biden and former President Donald J. Trump are the main parties’ nominees, as is now all but certain. The group’s leaders have said that their so-called “unity ticket” would have a Republican presidential candidate and a Democratic running mate. But the group is running low on potential contenders. As recently as January, the group was still courting or considering prominent current and former politicians including Jon Huntsman Jr., the Republican former governor of Utah; Larry Hogan, the Republican former governor of Maryland; and Senator Joe Manchin III, the conservative West Virginia Democrat, who has said he will not seek re-election. In February, Mr. Hogan announced that he would run for Maryland’s open Senate seat. A week later, Mr. Manchin ruled out running for president. “I will not be seeking a third-party run,” he said. Another problem for No Labels: As of January, the group was on the ballot in just 14 states, although it said it was “active” — gathering signatures and filing for ballot access — in more than a dozen others.
  5. A few days ago, someone mentioned that the GQP candidate for NC's governorship was terrible and had said some oddball things, but I didn't realize the extent of it. And, of course, he doesn't get called out by conservatives for his anti-semitism as they're loathe to criticize anyone in their ranks who spout anti-Jewish shit. I wonder why that is? I'm taking special care to include all the links in this Op-Ed in case any Republican posters/lurkers are in denial about what their party has become. We Need to Talk About This Republican Candidate’s Antisemitism Mark Robinson, the Republican nominee for governor of North Carolina, has for some reason not bothered to take down his old Facebook posts about the Jews. “There is a REASON the liberal media fills the airwaves with programs about the NAZI and the ‘6 million Jews’ they murdered,” Robinson, the state’s lieutenant governor, wrote in one 2017 post. (The reason was left unsaid, but the scare quotes spoke loudly.) He regularly argued on Facebook that focusing on the evils of Nazism obscured the greater danger: the one represented by the Democratic Party. “George Soros is alive. Adolf Hitler is dead,” he wrote in one post, and in another, “Who do you think has been pushing this Nazi boogeyman narrative all these years?” In 2018, Robinson, who is Black, offered some thoughts about what he seemed to see as a Jewish plot behind the hit movie “Black Panther.” The title character, he wrote, was “created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by satanic Marxist,” calling the movie “trash” that was “created to pull the shekels” from the pockets of Black people, whom he referred to using a Yiddish slur. He has refused to apologize for these statements, though he called them “poorly worded” and has denied that he’s antisemitic. None of this appears to have hurt Robinson with the Republican electorate in North Carolina, where on Tuesday he won nearly 65 percent of the vote in the gubernatorial primary. (In November, he will face the Democratic state attorney general, Josh Stein, who is Jewish.) Donald Trump enthusiastically endorsed Robinson, calling him “better than Martin Luther King.” We’re in the middle of a wrenching national discussion about antisemitism on the left, and where it overlaps with anti-Zionism. But Robinson is a reminder that in electoral politics, there is far more tolerance for antisemitism in the Republican Party than the Democratic one. I don’t want to downplay the problem of left-wing antisemitism or its closely related cousin, a jejune anti-imperialism that treats Hamas as heroes. Both phenomena have shocked me in the months since Oct. 7, and shouldn’t be rationalized as understandable reactions to Israeli savagery in Gaza. In an Atlantic cover story, Franklin Foer recently reported on anti-Jewish bullying, vandalism and conspiracy-mongering in Northern California. “In the hatred that I witnessed in the Bay Area, and that has been evident on college campuses and in progressive activist circles nationwide, I’ve come to see left-wing antisemitism as characterized by many of the same violent delusions as the right-wing strain,” he wrote. The fact that this kind of antisemitism more often comes from random civilians than public officials or authority figures is unlikely to comfort most Jews, who’ve inherited a deep fear of the mob as well as the autocrat. Still, we should be clear about which political faction is willing to give antisemites power. And even if you believe that the Michigan Democrat Rashida Tlaib’s use of the anti-Zionist slogan “from the river to the sea” is obviously antisemitic — I don’t — it’s worth asking why it received so much more coverage than Robinson’s apparent Holocaust denial, or for that matter, the promotion of antisemitic websites and social media posts by Republican congressmen like Arizona’s Paul Gosar and Georgia’s Mike Collins. According to NBC News’s Ben Goggin, this year, white nationalists had an unusually easy time penetrating the Conservative Political Action Conference, keynoted by Trump. “At the Young Republican mixer Friday evening, a group of Nazis who openly identified as national socialists mingled with mainstream conservative personalities, including some from Turning Point USA, and discussed ‘race science’ and antisemitic conspiracy theories,” Goggin wrote. If this caused a national uproar, I missed it. There are several reasons that anti-Jewish attitudes on the right — including Robinson’s — often don’t get the attention they should. For one thing, they’re old news. Back in 2022, the scholars Eitan Hersh and Laura Royden debunked the idea that antisemitism is a similar problem on both left-and right-wing ideological extremes, writing, “The data show the epicenter of antisemitic attitudes is young adults on the far right.” Antisemitism at Columbia University, located in a city with the largest Jewish population in the world, is surprising in a way that antisemitism among, say, Trump supporters no longer is. And like Trump — who, let’s remember, had dinner with the antisemitic rapper Ye and leading white nationalist Nick Fuentes in 2022 — Robinson has many other terrible qualities that can overshadow his history of anti-Jewish rhetoric. Chief among them is his misogyny. The lieutenant governor is in the news for a recently unearthed video from 2020 in which he said, “I absolutely want to go back to the America where women couldn’t vote.” (His somewhat incomprehensible argument was that in those halcyon days, Republicans led on issues including women’s suffrage.) “The only thing worse than a woman who doesn’t know her place is a man who doesn’t know his,” he wrote in 2017. There’s also a tendency for some in the Jewish establishment to overlook antisemitism among supporters of Israel. That’s how we ended up with the end-times preacher John Hagee, who has said that Hitler was sent by God to drive the Jews to their rightful home in the holy land, speaking at a major November rally against antisemitism, and the Anti-Defamation League praising Elon Musk, despite both Musk’s own antisemitic posts and the platform he’s given to virulent Jew-haters. Finally, Republicans benefit, ironically, from a relative lack of internal tension over antisemitism. Part of what drove news about Tlaib’s words was the way Democrats agonized over them. They were condemned by the White House, and 22 House Democrats joined Republicans to censure her. Several Democrats seen as hostile to Israel are facing extraordinarily well-funded primary challenges, and it’s an open question how voters will respond. There’s no similar fault line or drama on the right. Few are wondering if Republicans will finally be moved to denounce Robinson, because we almost certainly already know the answer.
  6. WTF is this disgraced and expelled congressman doing on the House floor?
  7. Wordle 992 4/6 ⬛🟩⬛⬛🟩 ⬛🟩🟩⬛🟩 🟩🟩🟩⬛🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Connections Puzzle #270 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟦🟦🟦🟦 🟪🟪🟪🟪 Daily Quordle 773 5️⃣4️⃣ 6️⃣7️⃣ m-w.com/games/quordle/ ⬜🟨⬜🟨⬜ ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜ ⬜🟨⬜⬜🟩 ⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩 🟨⬜🟩🟨⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜🟨🟨🟨⬜ ⬜⬜🟩⬜🟨 ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ 🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜ 🟩⬜🟨⬜⬜ ⬜⬜🟨🟨⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ 🟨🟩🟨⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬜⬜🟨🟨⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ClickWord.org Daily 397: 604 points (top 20% 🎊) 13 words: ⚛️🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪🟥🟥🟧🟨🟩🟩🟩 💪 Best word: 178 points 🔥 Streak: 2 days #ClickWord #ClickWordDaily397
  8. Tire falls off United flight departing SFO, crushing several vehicles in parking lot, company says SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- A tire fell off a United Airlines flight departing from San Francisco International Airport to Osaka, Japan Thursday morning, officials confirmed. "At approximately 11:35 a.m., United Flight 35 departing to Osaka lost a portion of landing gear tire during takeoff," a United representative said. The tire debris landed in one of the airport's employee parking lots. There were no injuries reported, but SKY7 was over the scene, where police placed caution tape around cars that appeared to be hit by the tire. In a statement, United Airlines said the flight was diverted to LAX where it landed safely. The company says crews are now working to arrange a new aircraft to take passengers to Osaka on Thursday evening. United said the flight had 235 customers, 10 flight attendants and four pilots -- for a total 249 people on board. "The 777-200 has six tires on each of its two main landing gear struts. The aircraft is designed to land safely with missing or damaged tires," the airline said. Officials say the runway was briefly closed to clear debris, but was soon reopened, with no further impact to airport operations anticipated. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) released a statement saying it will investigate this incident. Video of it falling at link: https://abc7news.com/united-flight-tire-falls-off-sfo-lax/14501038/
  9. No shit. It's like, "Hey guys! There's other fucking corrupt countries out there to cozy up to."
  10. This is dumb https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/07/biden-intel-briefings-trump-00145651 U.S. intelligence officials are planning to brief Donald Trump on national security matters if he secures the GOP nomination this summer — despite concerns about his handling of classified information. The decision would be in keeping with a tradition that dates back to 1952, but it would mark the first time an administration has volunteered to share classified information with a candidate who is facing criminal charges related to the mishandling of classified documents. The Biden administration intends to share intelligence with the former president no matter the outcome of his trial in Florida, according to a senior intelligence official and a second person with knowledge of internal conversations. They, like some others interviewed, were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations. The sit-down is not legally required, but for the last 72 years, incumbent administrations have tapped the spy agencies to read in the candidates of both major political parties on some of the most pressing threats to the country. While often this is just one meeting, sometimes candidates receive several briefings. The briefings, which are managed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and approved by the White House, normally take place after the national conventions in late summer.
  11. also https://www.nycourts.gov/LegacyPDFS/press/PDFs/People-v.DJT-Dec-OrderAnonymousJury.pdf
  12. https://abcnews.go.com/US/rupert-murdoch-engaged-6th-time-92-sources/story?id=107897609 Rupert Murdoch, the 92-year-old conservative media mogul, is engaged for the sixth time, sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News. News of his engagement to Elena Zhukova comes just months after the Fox boss effectively handed over the reins of his conservative media empire to his son, Lachlan Murdoch. The wedding is set for June at his California estate and vineyard, called Moraga. Multiple recent media reports describe Zhukova as a 66-year-old retired scientist. Reports also say her daughter was married to Roman Abramovich -- who the U.S. government has described as a Russian oligarch, seizing his yacht. Last August, news broke that Murdoch's engagement to his last fiancée, Ann Lesley Smith, was called off. A spokesperson confirmed the engagement.
  13. Moving on Trump loses bid to delay $83.3 million E. Jean Carroll judgment Judge Kaplan: “Mr. Trump's current situation is a result of his own dilatory actions. He has had since January 26 to organize his finances with the knowledge that he might need to bond this judgment, yet he waited until 25 days after the jury verdict …to file his prior motion for an unsecured or partially secured stay pending resolution of post-trial motions. … Accordingly, the present application for administrative stay is denied.”
  14. It's official, bitches. Sweden is finally in (as are Albania and Montenegro, but notably not Serbia). Sweden Enters NATO, a Blow to Moscow and a Boost to the Baltic Nations With the addition of Sweden to NATO, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia finds himself facing an enlarged and motivated alliance. Sweden formally joined NATO on Thursday, becoming its 32nd member two years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and sharply bolstering, with Finland, the military alliance’s deterrent in the Baltic and North Seas. With the addition of the new Nordic member states — Finland joined last year — the president of Russia, Vladimir V. Putin, now finds himself faced with an enlarged and motivated NATO, one that is no longer dreaming of a permanent peace but instead facing years of trying to contain a newly aggressive, imperial Russia. On Thursday, after months of uncertainty caused by the hesitations of Turkey and Hungary, Sweden officially became a member by depositing its legal paperwork — its instrument of accession to the North Atlantic Treaty — with the U.S. State Department in Washington. In a brief ceremony, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken received the documents from Ulf Kristersson, the Swedish prime minister, and said: “Good things come to those who wait.” Mr. Blinken said that “everything changed” after Russia’s invasion. “Swedes realized something very profound: that if Putin was willing to try to erase one neighbor from the map, then he might well not stop there.” Mr. Blinken said Sweden’s membership was a clear example “of the strategic debacle that Ukraine has become for Russia,” adding: “Everything that Putin sought to prevent, he has actually precipitated by his actions, by his aggression.” Mr. Kristersson said that “today is a truly historic day.” Sweden, he said, “will defend freedom together with the countries closest to us — both in terms of geography, culture and values.” He pledged that Sweden, which had largely dismantled its ground forces after 1989 but has maintained a powerful air force and navy, would soon reach NATO’s goal of spending 2 percent of G.D.P. on the military. NATO is planning a ceremony on Monday to raise the Swedish flag at its Brussels headquarters, as well as at NATO commands across Europe and North America. Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary general, called it “a historic day.” In a statement, he said that “Sweden will now take its rightful place at NATO’s table, with an equal say in shaping NATO policies and decisions. After over 200 years of nonalignment Sweden now enjoys the protection granted under Article 5, the ultimate guarantee of allies’ freedom and security.” Sweden, he continued, “makes NATO stronger, Sweden safer and the whole alliance more secure.” The Russian government has said that it will now take undefined measures to enhance its own defense against the newly enlarged NATO, which has, with Sweden and Finland, a much longer land border with Russia than before. “Sweden brings predictability, removing any uncertainty about how we would act in a crisis or a war,” said Robert Dalsjo, director of studies at the Swedish Defense Research Agency. Given Sweden’s geography, including Gotland, the island that helps control the entrance to the Baltic Sea, membership “will make defense and deterrence much easier to accomplish,” he said. After Russia’s full-scale invasion two years ago, Finland, with its long border with Russia, saw the most imminent danger. The Swedes did, too, but were also convinced, especially on the political left, by a sense of moral outrage that Russia, a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, would seek to destroy a peaceful, sovereign neighbor. “Overall the feeling is that we’ll be safer,” said Anna Wieslander, a Swede who is director for northern Europe for the Atlantic Council. With Sweden and Finland together in NATO, it will be much easier to bottle up the Russian surface navy in the Baltic Sea and to monitor the High North. Russia still has up to two-thirds of its second-strike nuclear weapons there, based on the Kola Peninsula. Sweden, with its own advanced high-tech defense industry, makes its own excellent fighter planes, naval corvettes and submarines, designed to operate in the difficult environment of the Baltic Sea. It has already begun to develop and build a new class of modern submarines and larger corvettes for coastal and air defense. With NATO membership, it will be easier now to coordinate with Finland and Denmark, which also have key islands in the Baltic, and with Norway. Sweden may also join NATO’s multinational forward brigade in Latvia, intended to put allied troops in all the alliance countries bordering Russia. Sweden’s main tasks, Ms. Wieslander said, will be to help guard the Baltic and the airspace over Kaliningrad; to ensure the security of Gothenburg, which is key for resupply and reinforcements; and to serve as a staging area for American and NATO troops, with agreements for the advance positioning of equipment, ammunition, supplies and field hospitals.
  15. My best guess would be to go the Pampa route rather than over by Borger. You can also always check TxDOT's Drive Texas website that shows traffic conditions and road closures. The NASA hotspot map looks okay the Pampa direction right now.
  16. It's estimated that Hamas is holding about 134 hostages, while Israel is holding thousands of Palestinians from within Israel alongside those they've taken Gaza. We can suspect some Palestinians may have been combatants or are Hamas adjacent, but we know that they're also holding many, many innocents, including women and juveniles.
  17. Weirdly Warm Winter Has Climate Fingerprints All Over It, Study Says Recent heat waves in cities worldwide have the hallmarks of global warming, researchers said. And last month was the hottest February on record. Winter was weirdly warm for half the world’s population, driven in many places by the burning of fossil fuels, according to an analysis of temperature data from hundreds of locations worldwide. That aligns with the findings published late Wednesday by the European Union’s climate monitoring organization, Copernicus: The world as a whole experienced the hottest February on record, making it the ninth consecutive month of record temperatures. Even more startling, global ocean temperatures in February were at an all-time high for any time of year, according to Copernicus. Taken together, the two sets of figures offer a portrait of an unequivocally warming world that, combined with a natural El Niño weather pattern this year, has made winter unrecognizable in some places. The first analysis, conducted by Climate Central, an independent research group based in New Jersey, found that in several cities in North America, Europe and Asia, not only was winter unusually warm, but climate change played a distinctly recognizable role. Climate Central looked at anomalies in December and January temperature data in 678 cities worldwide and asked: How important are the fingerprints of climate change for these unusual temperatures? That is to say, its researchers tried to isolate the usual variability of the weather from the influence of climate change. “There’s the temperature,” said Andrew Pershing, Climate Central’s vice-president for science, “and then there’s our ability to really detect that climate signal in the data.” Cities in the Midwestern United States jumped out for experiencing an extraordinarily warm winter and for the influence of climate change, which is caused mainly by the burning of coal, oil and other fossil fuels that release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. “Really off the charts,” Dr. Pershing said. “No ice on most of the great lakes. That’s remarkable.” Minneapolis, for instance, was nearly 5.6 degrees Celsius warmer than average between December and February. The fingerprints of climate change could be detected for 33 days, essentially a third of the winter season. Tehran was 4.2 degrees Celsius warmer on average during the same three-month period. The effects of human-made climate change could be detected over 68 days of winter. Milan’s winter average temperature was roughly 2 degrees Celsius higher, but there was a strong climate change signal over 55 days,. Elsewhere, even though there were a few significantly hot days, winter average temperatures didn’t vary wildly and the climate signal was less pronounced. The Climate Central report, also published Wednesday, concluded that 4.8 billion people worldwide “experienced at least one day of temperatures that would be virtually impossible without the influence of carbon pollution.” In some parts of the world, the unusually warm winter weather was overshadowed by other crises, such as war. Several cities in Ukraine were significantly warmer than usual, and there, too, were the fingerprints of climate change. Kyiv, for instance, was nearly 3 degrees Celsius warmer on average this winter, and climate change was seen to have played a role for 33 days. Likewise, in several cities of Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. In the tropical belt, where it’s usually much hotter on average, climate signals are easier to detect, though temperature increases can be smaller. Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur for instance were barely 1 degree Celsius warmer on average. But the effects of climate change could be detected for nearly the entire three-month period. It’s not just individual cities that set records this winter. Globally, February 2024 was the warmest February on record, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service. It was 1.77 degrees Celsius above the average February temperature in the recent preindustrial era from 1850-1900. This is the ninth month in a row to break the temperature record for that respective month. Taken together, the past 12 months have been the hottest 12 consecutive months on record: 1.56 degrees Celsius above the average from 1850-1900. “A year ago, the fact that the global temperature for a particular month would reach 1.5 degrees C above the pre-industrial level would have been considered exceptional,” said Julien Nicolas, a senior scientist at Copernicus, via email. Now, it’s happened repeatedly. This doesn’t mean we have exceeded the international Paris Agreement goal of stopping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial temperature. For that to happen, the planet would need to be 1.5 degrees warmer for several years, long enough to reflect a more permanent change. For now, in the short term, the ocean has been particularly hot. The average global sea-surface temperature in February was the warmest recorded for any month, surpassing the previous record set in August 2023.
  18. Profound Damage Found in Maine Gunman’s Brain, Possibly From Blasts A laboratory found a pattern of cell damage that has been seen in veterans exposed to weapons blasts, and said it probably played a role in symptoms the gunman displayed before the shooting. A specialized laboratory examining the brain of the gunman who committed Maine’s deadliest mass shooting found profound brain damage of the kind that has been seen in veterans exposed to repeated blasts from weapons use. The lab’s findings were included in an autopsy report that was compiled by the Maine chief medical examiner’s office and released by the gunman’s family. The gunman, Robert Card, was a grenade instructor in the Army Reserve. In 2023, after eight years of being exposed to thousands of skull-shaking blasts on the training range, he began hearing voices and was stalked by paranoid delusions, his family said. He grew increasingly erratic and violent in the months before the October rampage in Lewiston, in which he killed 18 people and then himself. His brain was sent to a Veterans Affairs laboratory in Boston that is known for its pioneering work documenting chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., in athletes. According to the lab’s report, prepared on Feb. 26 and updated on Wednesday, the white matter that forms the wiring deep in the brain had “moderately severe” damage, and in some areas was missing entirely. The delicate tissue sheaths that insulate each biological circuit lay in “disorganized clumps,” and throughout Mr. Card’s brain there was scarring and inflammation suggesting repeated trauma. This was not C.T.E., the report said. It was a characteristic pattern of damage that has been found before in military veterans who were repeatedly exposed to weapons blasts during their service. “While it is unclear whether these pathological findings are responsible for Mr. Card’s behavioral changes in the last 10 months of life, based on our previous studies it is likely that brain injury played a role in his symptoms,” the report concluded. The findings have grave implications for the military, because Mr. Card never saw combat, and had never been exposed to explosions from enemy fire or roadside bombs. The only blasts that hit his brain came from training that the Army said was safe. “We know very little about the risks of blast exposure,” said Dr. Ann McKee, who leads the lab and signed the report. “I think these results should be a warning. We need to do more investigation.” cont'd
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